Cityfolk rush around constantly texting each other, but here in the Hudson Valley, we have time to lay on the sofa and read, as snowflakes gather silently on the pine boughs outside. Once a year, local readers rise off their sofas and gather together for the Woodstock Bookfest. This year it begins on April 3 and takes place at venues across Woodstock.
Over time, the Bookfest has evolved a structure. The first event on April 3 showcases an art form that predates the written word: storytelling. The Story Slam will feature 21 contestants and three judges. Each story must contain the line: “I knew I had to do good.”
“I felt like the world was in a shitty enough place that the Bookfest had to offer some hope,” Martha Frankel, founder and executive director of the festival, explains.
April 5 is a one-on-one interview with a prominent author; this year Griffin Dunne is the guest. Best known as an actor and director, Dunne’s best-selling memoir The Friday Afternoon Club recounts his life growing up in Beverly Hills in the 1960s, where his first girlfriend was Carrie Fisher. The murder of his sister Dominique in 1982 was a defining crisis for his family. In 2017, Dunne made the documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold about his illustrious aunt.
“I’ve learned that Sunday morning we need to do something that’s fun,” Frankel explains. In this case it will be a “Gilmore Girls” trivia contest.
The finale on April 6 is the Memoir-A-Go-Go! panel, a genre close to Frankel’s heart—she is best known for Hats & Eyeglasses, the story of her gambling addiction. This year the panel includes local author Sophie Strand, whose memoir The Body Is a Doorway explores her chronic illness as a tortuous path to liberation.
Women’s issues are central to this year’s program. “Had Kamala won, I would’ve done an entirely female festival,” Frankel reveals. Jessica Valenti will be on the panel “Women’s Rights in Post-Roe America.” Valenti says about her book Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, And the Truths We Use To Win: “I don’t think of it as preaching to the choir. I think of it as arming the choir.”
Ada Calhoun will discuss her first novel, Crush, about a married woman who becomes infatuated with a friend and ransacks world literature to strategize how to keep both men. Calhoun will be on the panel “Love and Heartbreak,” along with poet Timothy Liu and Lisa A. Phillips, author of First Love: Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak. “All three of us have done a lot of thinking about love and grief and friendship and sex, all from different angles and in different genres,” Calhoun says. “I think when we come together to talk about these things in Woodstock, we will solve them.”
Holly George-Warren, author of the recent Janis Joplin biography Janis: Her Life and Music, will host a panel including Moon Zappa, whose memoir Earth To Moon chronicles her struggles with her famous father, Frank, whom she nursed during his fatal illness. Also on the panel is Lori Tucker-Sullivan, who interviewed 14 widows of rock stars for her book I Can’t Remember If I Cried, including Sandy Helm, wife of Woodstock legend Levon Helm.
The Bookfest began in 2010 to help the Golden Notebook, Woodstock’s beloved bookstore, weather the recession. Originally known as the Woodstock Writers Festival, the name was changed in 2016 to make it more welcoming to nonwriters. Though it skipped three years due to the pandemic, the festival has become a yearly Catskills ritual. “I say this to writers all the time: We are a small festival, but we sell a ton of books,” Frankel remarks.
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This article appears in March 2025.
